A little more than a month after consumers and neighborhood repairers packed a Massachusetts State House hearing room to urge passage of the Right to Repair legislation, the State Senate late Thursday evening strongly approved the measure.


In the Senate-passed legislation (S. 2204), vehicle manufacturers are required to sell all non-proprietary repair information to local neighborhood mechanics, repair shops and dealers so they can all repair vehicles using the same codes provided by the manufacturers.

To read the bill, click here.

More than 100,000 citizens signed the Right to Repair ballot initiative earlier this year. If the legislature does not pass a final bill, the state's consumers may have another option: The Right to Repair Coalition has launched the next phase of its "Campaign for Consumers" and has begun gathering the final batch of 11,000 voter signatures required to get the issue on the November 2012 ballot.